The Los Angeles Times reports today (8/13/10) that the “moral argument” over California’s Proposition 8, which banned gay marriages, “has morphed into a debate over the democratic process and the propriety of judges overturning laws approved by voters.”

It’s strange, then, that an article on this “debate” would feature only viewpoints from one side: the side that says, “The people voted on it and it should be left alone.” All five of the sources quoted by reporter Mike Anton took this position. (There was also a two-word quotation from Judge Vaughan Walker’s ruling: “moral disapproval.”)

Anton does note that “tension between ‘majority rule’ and a Constitution designed to protect the rights of individuals against the majority” is “one of the oldest conflicts in the nation.” Given that, wouldn’t it make sense to find someone to take issue with his sources’ assertions that “in a democracy, the people decide”?

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USA Today’s lead story on August 10 was about the pay of public workers, a subject reporter Dennis Cauchon has complained about before. “Federal Workers Earning Double Their Private Counterparts,” the headline read, over a lead that reported that “federal employees’ average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn.”

Well, that certainly sounds unfair–some workers earning twice as much as their counterparts just because they work for the federal government! It’s hard not to agree with the source USA Today brings on from the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute, who says, “Can’t we now all agree that federal workers are overpaid and do something about it?”

Hard, that is, until you read the second to last paragraph, which reveals: “USA Today reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20 percent more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.”

Oh. So when you look at “comparable occupations”–and don’t just put all federal workers up against all private workers, which is what the paper means by “counterparts”–you don’t get a 100 percent difference, you get a 20 percent difference. And that’s without adjusting for differences in experience and education, which you certainly have to do if you want to make an apples to apples comparison. At TheAtlantic.com (8/13/10), Derek Thompson interviewed two experts who did try to account for job categories, education and experience; the expert from the conservative American Enterprise Institute said that federal workers get 12 percent more in compensation than comparable private sector workers, while the expert from the progressive Center for American Progress said that they get 7 percent to 12 percent less.

But USA Today doesn’t even attempt to sort through the compensation for comparable workers. It wants you to focus on that “more than double” figure (which–it should be noted–includes pension and health benefits as well as salary).

So underlying USA Today’s front-page story is the assumption that in a fair system, all workers would be paid the same amount–regardless of what they do, or how much education or experience they have. The word for this system is communism–a more extreme version than the one they had in the old Soviet Union. Funny, we’ve never seen USA Today embracing radical economic philosophies–except when it comes to lowering public workers’ wages.

P.S. CBS Evening News (8/10/10) picked up on the USA Today story–leading the right-wing News Busters (8/12/10) to complain that “Only CBS Reports on Salary Gap Between Public and Private Employees.”

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Last year, when California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8, there was little speculation about the sexual orientation of the seven justices or the possible heterosexual biases they might harbor.

But when federal Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8 on August 4, reporting and commentary treated claims of Walker’s gayness as a matter of fact–and a newsworthy subject. This despite Walker’s never having addressed his sexual orientation publicly. As gay activist Michelangelo Signorile noted on the Huffington Post,  “Most major media organizations, from the New York Times and ABC News to the Washington Post and National Public Radio, have reported on him as gay or had commentators saying it.”

This treatment, which was in sharp contrast to the the rules journalists normally use to determine if they will or will not report on a subject’s sexual orientation, provided a service to anti-gay groups who wanted to claim that Walker’s ostensible sexuality made him biased and unfit to rule on Proposition 8. In the twisted logic of the homophobes, of course, heterosexuals’ views on gay marriage are unbiased.

While no one has come forth with actual evidence suggesting bias on Walker’s part, what do you call it when journalists treat sexual orientation (or even rumors of such) as newsworthy when judges’ decisions’ favor gay rights, but unworthy of mention when they don’t? Isn’t that a bias?

As Signorile concluded on the Huffington Post (in an article that oddly referred to the allegation of Walker’s gayness as a “smear tactic”), this is more than a story about the tactics of the anti-gay rights right: “It’s a testament to how easily the media is manipulated by the right into doing things about which editors and reporters claim to be staunchly opposed.”

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In his New York Times column on Monday (8/9/10), headlined “The Flimflam Man,” Paul Krugman took aim at Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who has emerged as the GOP’s big thinker on budgets:

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: As long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Krugman explains that Ryan’s plan–big tax cuts, big cuts in spending–would actually not slash the deficit at all; it would make it bigger. And his tax “cuts” would really be tax hikes for everyone but the most well-off.

Krugman slammed “self-styled centrists” who ”want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense…. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.”

Now turn to today’s Times, and a piece from Matt Bai. The subject is the very same Paul Ryan, whom Bai calls the “Republican star of the moment” thanks to his budget blueprint, which is termed “unusually austere.”

Bai references Krugman’s criticism, but then tells readers:

Let’s leave aside for now the debate over the viability of the road map, which, as a practical matter, doesn’t stand a chance of being enacted as is, anyway. The more pertinent question is whether Mr. Ryan is the kind of guy who just wants to make a point–or whether his road map represents the starting point in what could be a serious negotiation about entitlements and spending.

Well, why is that the pertinent question? The roadmap is presented as Ryan’s ideas about what the government should do. Why would you ignore what it says and pretend that it represents a possible “starting point” for doing something different?

Because apparently Obama needs a ” useful nemesis on the right,” Ryan’s not “blindly partisan,” he’s friendly with some Democrats–and, perhaps most importantly:

Mr. Ryan appears to be the rare kind of guy who actually dreams of making Social Security solvent, rather than of using the issue to bludgeon opponents or get himself on television. While his own proposal for private investment accounts might be a deal-breaker for the White House, he identifies Social Security as an area where there is “clearly room for compromise” and says of his road map generally, “I’m trying to get the discussion to an adult level.”

As Tim Fernholz pointed out at Tapped (8/12/10), though, Ryan’s plan would do nothing to improve Social Security’s financial outlook:

This Center for Budget and Policy Priorities analysis notes that “because the plan would divert large sums from Social Security to private accounts, it would leave the program facing insolvency in about 30 years, just as under current law.” A warning, then, to Bai: Appearances can be deceiving.

Krugman took to his Times blog to critique this Times piece, which is worth a read.

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Trying to explain why Need to Know, the PBS public affairs show that appeared in the Friday night timeslot vacated by Bill Moyers Journal and Now, has gotten such a cool reception from viewers, co-host Allison Stewart seems to blame nostalgia. “Obviously you can’t replace Bill Moyers,” says Stewart
(Show Tracker, 8/5/10). “That’s just a ridiculous notion.”

The funny thing is, Bill Moyers was replaced: When he left Now to resume doing Bill Moyers Journal, David Brancaccio took over as host, later joined by Maria Hinojosa. Under their tenure, Now retained its loyal following, because Brancaccio and Hinojosa were pursuing the same kind of independent investigative journalism that Moyers had aspired to–the kind of programming that PBS was created to air because it’s unlikely to be produced by commercial networks.

If those same viewers find Need to Know lacking, it’s not because Stewart and co-host Jon Meacham aren’t Moyers–it’s because they don’t understand the journalistic values that Moyers represented.

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FAIR just released an action alert about the New York Times and a factchecking failure on its op-ed page. Read the alert if you haven’t already, and if you decide to write to the Times, please share your letter in the comments section below.

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